System Center 2012 Licensing Announced

System Center 2012 introduces major changes to the way Microsoft licenses System Center systems management products. The changes make licensing simpler and more consistent but eliminate individual product licenses, requiring customers to buy a suite instead. Although the company offers attractive transition options, pricing changes require customers to quickly evaluate purchasing options, and customers who want to use only one System Center product will find it substantially more expensive to do so.

Only Managed Endpoints Need to Be Licensed

The System Center product line supports computer configuration, monitoring, virtualization, backup, software deployment and installation, and other administrative tasks. (See the sidebar “System Center Product Names“.) With System Center 2012, Microsoft has eliminated licenses for the individual components and instead will sell licenses for suites that include eight previously separate products.

As for previous versions, a Management License (ML) is required for each endpoint device being managed with System Center. However, unlike previous versions, System Center 2012 does not require licenses for the servers running the management server software itself—the right to run the management software on servers is included when a customer purchases endpoint MLs.